IMAGE ENCODING METHOD, IMAGE DECODING METHOD, IMAGE ENCODING APPARATUS, IMAGE DECODING APPARATUS, IMAGE ENCODING PROGRAM, IMAGE DECODING PROGRAM, AND RECORDING MEDIA

摘要

An image encoding device and an image decoding device encodes with a low overall output size while preventing encoding-efficiency degradation in occlusion regions. When encoding a multiview image comprising a plurality of images from different perspectives, this device, using a reference image from a different perspective from a target image being encoded and a reference depth map for a subject in said reference image, encodes while performing image prediction across different perspectives. The device is provided with: a combined-perspective-image generation unit that uses the reference image and reference depth map to generate a combined-perspective image for the target image; a usability determination unit that, for each encoding region determines whether or not the combined-perspective image is usable; and an image encoding unit that performs predictive encoding on the target image while selecting predicted-image generation methods for encoding regions for which the combined-perspective image was determined to be unusable.

主权项

1. An image encoding apparatus which performs encoding while predicting an image between different views using a reference image encoded for a view different from that of an encoding target image and a reference depth map for an object in the reference image when a multi-view image including images of a plurality of different views is encoded, the image encoding apparatus comprising:
a view-synthesized image generating unit which generates a view-synthesized image for the encoding target image using the reference image and the reference depth map; an availability determining unit which determines whether the view-synthesized image is available for each of encoding target regions into which the encoding target image is divided; and an image encoding unit which, for each of the encoding target regions, encodes nothing for each of the encoding target regions if the availability determining unit determines that the view-synthesized image is available and performs predictive encoding on the encoding target image for each of the encoding target regions while selecting a predicted image generation method if the availability determining unit determines that the view-synthesized image is unavailable.